idenz- Theater, where once Mozart had conducted "Don Giovanni," or to attend '''-rhe Ring" at the Hof- The- ater, where the world premières of ,er r . d I Id " d " D . M . rlstan un so e an Ie elster- singer" had been given. rrhe second year abroad, 1912, Bocher returned to Paris and studied art under E. M. Taylor, a Scotsman then in vogue as a drawing teacher. In 1 913 the weary Bochers returned to Manhattan. Here Bocher received word that three of his stu- dent drawings had been hung in the Pa- ris Salon des Décorateurs. rro get back to what seemed like the beginning of fame, he acted as courier to twenty-one American women and their thirty-three pieces of luggage, all bound for France. Later, in London, he kept himself going by painting advertising posters, and final- ly got a. commission to illustrate a book of poetry, for which he was paid a hun- dred pounds. On the strength of this windfall, ,Bocher cabled to his family, "Success at last. Come back to Europe immediately." rrhey got there in plenty of time to return with him to New York because of the outbreak of the first ,\r orld "r ar. E. L. Mayer, at that time one of the leading wholesale clothing manufac- turers in New York, met Bocher and hired him to do some fashion drawings. rrhough neither lVlr. Mayer nor he sus- pected it, this was the beginning of Bocher's r.eal career. In 191 7 he joined an American hospital unit and once again landed in France. Later, Bocher enlisted in the army in Paris. Because he now spoke fluent French and German, he was assigned to G-2, the Intelligence Corps, and was given the rank of ser- geant major. After a period of training with the British at Le Havre, he re- turned to Paris to work with the French as a plainclothes agent. He posed as an American music student-quite honest- ly, since he actually was taking vocal lessons with the baritone Albers of the Opéra Comique. Most of Bocher's G-2 work was trailing members of a drug ring which was supplying narcotics to American aviators. Whenever Bocher thought he was being followed by a drug-ring suspect, he hurried to his sing- ing teacher's and sang scales to put his man off the track. After he was demobilized, Bocher be- gan what he ardently hoped was to be a career in grand opera. He had what singers call a baritone-Martin or high-baritone voice. During the war, an American woman canteen worker had heard him singing one evening in a Y.M.C.A. hut, and persuaded friends of her family to pay for several years' vocal training in Paris, first with Albers and later with Mme. Valda. On the day in 1 921 that the family friends turned up in Paris to hear their protégé sing, Bocher, owing to overwork and strain, lost his voice completely. F()l three years afterward he could not sing a note. rrhat summer he started sketching '-- fashions for Harper's Bazaar at $100 a week. rrhree years later Condé N ast gave him a job as Paris fashion editor of V ogue at a salary of $15,000. He had finally got into his stride, and in a kind of work he had never expected to be in. He had not written a line for publica- tion until, at the age of thirty-four, he wrote his first editorial as the new editor of V 0 gut'. rrhe re is a dictum in the fashion trade that a newcomer either shows a flair right off the bat or not '-- at all, since he cannot develop one if he lives to be a million. Bocher had an uncommon flair for picking, at the col':' lections, the Paris dresses and styles which the fashionable women of Paris and America would within a month or 2ï so winnow out and select for themselves, thus making the seasonal mode. As the V ogue editor, he also invented certain definitions which have since gone into the regular fashion-trade vocabulary, as well as the phrases "off-white" and " d k ." d h d . ressma er SUItS an t e apt escnp- . " 1 h " tlon spectator sports c ot es. In 1929, after five years with Vogue, he left because he was convinced that he could never go higher than the $25,000 a year he was already get- ting, and because he was convinced that if, as an editor, he could pick win- ners among the successful dressmakers' clothes, he could design clothes him- self. His company was incorporated for 900,000 francs (about $40,OUU), the stockholders being himself) his mother, his friends the Countess Albert de Mun, Mrs. Gilbert Miller, and the then Countess Paul de Vallombrosa (former- ly Mrs. Ruth Goldbeck, now Mme. André Dubonnet), all Americans by birth. rr oday Bocher owns all the Main- bocher stock, the last two outside femi- nine stockholders having been ,amicably 'õ<$ ;$":"'-'''T!A _ ' _ -'' '' %"m Ît--ÿ.>"",-'-' """ i ,:'-:-f-:: , :'..'-\. t þ tt ::.: ::,,=' ?i- :;O' :: : Irt;; i ; p '--: ' ,', ;: " ".:", ,::,:::,::t.: , ;;1.: \ j: Jt -=' :',':',-: I ,::.:: . ,. .. .:;:-:' ': .' . . .". j ..,:,...;..:.:...":..'.:, ,::..' '..,.......,-,,- . ..... ,......... " . ::":'::" \ M:;; :;;::,;:! *:!:, :;;;ff(1):;: /^ ....,'..,' ,;, ]þ ;i:;; ' :; C ,,;" ,:"'\ .; .":=::",,;,; .' ,.,.';,... :r!@;; :j < );: i:" '>< - ,:, "": . .:, , ---,;.: : :: ':: : t t: : : :t::' ; :t':' -::":,:::::.::: t, ': f{:, ii{. g:):::-::,:: :":":::-:-: :.. , þ , lim,,!:,:,:" : .::::::' n:), ,: '::::":'" .. ". -- , ';'\ Ît.ù1E j",>t'ii,,,.: " {' , < '.' "" ,:,:': , "-- , ,::::; ..>>:, -:: : , JiA'7[fJ:h, .'. '>>:.: '. :,. V'" .:: :..;t "",":.',:,' ' J- 'd ';:'Y " " , :-' .. i":" tt< VV ..::i:: )( :: ::::' ..,.. . 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